


spinning on that dizzy edge

by roselatte



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bodyswap, Child Abuse, M/M, Suicide Attempt, Your Name. AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-07-14 20:50:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16048301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roselatte/pseuds/roselatte
Summary: Ronan and Adam find their way into each other's worlds when they begin to magically swap bodies and lives.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm tagging this as 'your name.' to get away with not tagging all the other tropes used but you don't need to have watched the movie and in fact, if you did watch it then don't have Expectations lol i just stole the core themes/plot points. do take the other tags seriously though, i don't think anything is worse than canon, but it's very present.
> 
> **declan says some shitty things regarding suicide in this chapter.**
> 
> anyway if anyone out there is reading this..please suspend a lot of disbelief for this fic and let me know if the formatting is confusing.

* * *

 

When Ronan wakes up, he is decidedly not in his room.

When he goes to rub his eyes, the hand he raises is decidedly not his hand.

He makes a sound as he shoots up, and that voice is decidedly not his voice.

Ronan slams a lid on the panic eagerly storming forth. The room he’s in is not exactly a room, rather it’s a couple of cheap dividers closing him off from what, judging by his surroundings, does not look to be a promising house.

Maybe he’s still dreaming. (He knows he’s not.)

He pinches himself anyway. Painful. And also not helpful in the slightest since he experiences pain in dreams. But this particular pain plucks at him.

He can’t remember the last thing that happened, but there was a lot of red and a lot of pain and then a lot of black.

 _I’m fucking dead,_ he thinks. Or he's stuck in some inception bullshit, and he's created his own personal hell. Hell would be a sorry excuse of a bedroom, with low thread count sheets and a mattress made of rocks.

He rubs his eyes with his not-hands. The room does not change.

_What happened  what happened what was that last thing—_

The watch on the hand reads 6 AM. There’s a clatter from outside the dividers.

Outside the dividers holds beer cans on any available surface, a bulky television, a mangled, squashy couch, and suspicious stains. A cracked vase with wilted flowers sits by a long window, next to it are more beer cans. There isn’t any wallpaper, though he’s not sure, it’s all vulgar posters with bits of plaster sticking through. It’s cramped. Ronan isn’t bumping into anything but he feels like he should be.

His heart beats triple time. His heart doesn’t beat at all.

In a sectioned off kitchen, a woman scrapes corn out of a can and onto a dirty plate, which she hands off to him. She fixes Ronan with a beady look. “Eat. He’ll be back in an hour so make yourself scarce.”

_Who’s he  where am I  is this hell  who are you—_

There’s a twist in his nerves; a deep-rooted intuition tells him this isn’t the person to talk to. He eats the corn in three bites with a hunger that can’t be his, and she claws the plate off of him.

Back inside the safety of the dividers in his new hell room, Ronan rummages. Under the bed, there are some textbooks and a torn-up shoebox with a few torn up pay stubs. There’s a backpack, unspectacular in every way except for a keychain connecting some worn, sloppily braided material. In the backpack are typical school things; more evidence he’s in hell. All the notebooks and binders are labeled with meticulous detail. The largest binder has a long and brutal handwritten schedule. There’s a wallet with a couple of crumbled bills and an ID card from Aglionby Academy. It’s faded and the lamination is coming off.

“Adam Parrish,” Ronan mutters, and shocks himself; he forgot he didn’t have his own voice.

The face on the upper corner of the ID is odd. Ronan touches his not-face, the high, flat eyebrows, the uneven corners of lips, the softness under the eyes, the dryness under that softness, like the skin is parched. Ronan hasn’t seen himself yet, but he knows the face he’s touching is the odd face of this odd boy.

This Adam Parrish.

Two weeks after his dad died, Ronan had gone back to school. He was taking a test and the pen in his hand was shaking. It was shaking and shaking until it was exploding, the blue ink splattering violent and permanent over the paper and through his shirt.

That is how the full realization of what’s happening smears across him now.

He wants it to be a dream. But there’s another clatter outside and it’s not a dream.

Ronan methodically puts everything inside the backpack, one by one, because he’s not going to freak out.

He’s at a loss over what to do, once the rummaging is done. If he does nothing, he’ll freak out which wouldn’t be productive, and he doesn’t want to stay in this place, especially not with the beady-eyed woman right outside. Adam Parrish is busy enough that Ronan won’t have to think about freaking out, so he might as well follow the schedule. He doesn’t know where the factory blocked in at 4 P.M-7 P.M. is. He doesn’t know where Aglionby Academy is.

“Get on with it!” Her voice is tired and sliced.

It’s not like he has a choice. He’ll just wing it.

It’s not hard to find the bathroom, as there aren’t many doors here, and he does it quickly, assisted by the slitted glare of the woman. The mother, she’s definitely Adam Parrish’s mother.

Ronan looks very carefully in the mirror as he brushes the teeth. After he rinses, he pushes at the face, praying for it to mold into his own, but the skin bounces back. Each time. He allows himself to panic here. One minute—sixty seconds; Ronan counts them with short, raspy breaths, and the lid is back on.

He does not look at all while he does everything else. He doesn’t look when he puts on the uniform either and feels like an idiot.

It’s a body, it’s just a body. It’s not his body.

As he leaves, the woman—the mother, Adam Parrish’s mother—sharply says, “don’t be late.”

There’s a bike outside, and Ronan takes it, hoping it belongs to this Adam Parrish. If not, he’s stealing a bike. He’s using Adam Parrish’s body to steal a bike.

 _What is going on  is he possessing someone  what is this_ —

It’s not hard to find Aglionby Academy either. There’s only one road leading out of the place Adam Parrish lives, and Ronan bikes fast, following after showy cars carrying silhouettes and uniforms like his. Like Adam Parrish’s. Aglionby Academy sounds like the sort of place to attract cars like the Vulcan that blows by him. Ronan knows because he goes to a place like that—or he once did.

_Don’t freak out._

Ronan locks the bike up at a lonely bike rack and swallows down dejection because Aglionby Academy has the same sweltering, trapped climate as his own school. He walks around holding the schedule like those tourists in Ireland and is late to every class. He’s always forgiven, and it becomes apparent to him that Adam Parrish is perfect to the teachers here.

Ronan draws ravens on the notebooks and writes out creative swears in creative handwriting. He hopes through the course of the day one of the students or a teacher or anyone in the school would face him with a dramatic flourish and reveal that, “yes Ronan Lynch you are in hell, you are in the underworld, you are in the shithole you go to when you’re a monster and you’ve got cursed, monster powers.” This doesn’t happen, and it’s all very boring and very scary until—

Ronan slaps the notebook onto the locker and the head next to it snaps around. “Bug,” Ronan explains while rubbing the wasp’s remains off on the locker.

The boy stares at him slack-jawed in his tailored uniform. Somehow he makes the expression look sophisticated. Ronan is suddenly so angry and hateful because what else could this place be if not some nightmarish alternate reality?

“Fuck off with that face,” Ronan growls and judging by the boy’s expression, _fuck off with that face_ is not something Adam Parrish says often.

The boy grabs his sleeve when Ronan turns to go and the anger twists up in his gut. Ronan imagines punching him, but he can’t do it. These aren’t his hands and this isn’t his life.

Ronan slants him a glare over his shoulder. He doesn’t want to punch him really. Or anyone. At best, he wants to fling a wine bottle at an abstract form of his older brother. But that’s a normal desire, and Ronan is thankful to have one thing stay consistent.

“I know you,” the boy says, snapping his fingers. “You’re. Hm! You are...?” He trails off, his eyes questioning and expectant.

 _Ronan Lynch._ “Adam Parrish,” Ronan says smoothly. He tugs his arm out of the boy’s grasp.

The boy’s face brightens. “Oh. Right, right. I’m Richard Campbell Gansey.” He hesitates before adding, “the third.”

“The third what?”

“That’s my full name.”

Ronan has thoughts on this he’d like to voice, but he doesn’t want Adam Parrish’s contained voice to say them. It should be his voice; why be cruel if he can’t be genuine about it?

“Cool,” Ronan says. “I have work.” Which Adam Parrish does have.

But there aren’t any cars Ronan can follow to the warehouse. He folds the schedule over until only the part where the warehouse hours are blocked in shows.

“You know where this is?”

Richard Campbell Gansey (the third) smiles like he’s waited his whole life to be asked this. He looks it up on his phone and writes the instructions on the back of the schedule.

“Do you want a ride?” he asks.

Ronan wants, but Adam Parrish has a bike, so he says no.

Biking to the warehouse means he’s forced to take in the surrounding scenery. A couple of scattered, dilapidated signs tell him he’s in Henrietta which is in Virginia which is in America. The last bit Ronan already guessed thanks to past vacations, but he doesn’t enjoy the confirmation. There’s an uncomfortable gap in his mind, a memory he has pressed down. It’s not about _that last thing what was it_ it’s about this place. It plucks at him like the pain did; it sits in his mind like a worn down map with the names and routes faded off.

The dying grass, the smell of old pollen, the stinging dust, all of these call to him, as if he’s breathed this air and touched this ground before. But that doesn’t make sense.

He figures it’s because of Adam Parrish, who lives here and knows here. Evidence: Ronan’s never done any manual labor job in his life but somehow survives the warehouse job. He gets yelled at four times, but that doesn’t seem too bad given his situation.

It gets too bad when he starts biking again. There are no other mind-numbing tasks on Adam Parrish’s schedule. His thoughts scatter wild and unruly and it’s frightening and he doesn’t know anyone or what street he’s on and how did this happen _what is happening  what was that last thing  why does he remember pain—_

_Don’t be late._

Ronan’s swear mixes with the wind screeching in his ears. He’d been biking around, doing the freaking out he told himself he would not do.

He doesn’t know where the place Adam Parrish lives is, not from here. He asks anybody he sees walking questions like, “do you know this place with a bunch of long ass cars” or, “there’s this place with a fuckload of trailers do you know where”.

He makes it back to the trailer park, and Adam Parrish’s mother did not specify when late was, but Ronan knows he’s late.

Once he enters the double-wide, Ronan finds out why Adam was told to make himself scarce.

 

⊷⊶

 

When Adam wakes up in the hospital, he thinks _dad’s finally done it._

He’s in a private room, which doesn’t make sense. Even if his parents had the money for it, they wouldn’t pay for him to have his own room. There’s a cheery vase on the corner table overflowing with huge, beautiful flowers. Adam reaches out to touch them, because they’re there and he’s never seen flowers so nice in Henrietta, but pain racks up his arm.

His vision blurs.

It’s a pain suppressed by painkillers, it’s a gate doing it’s best to hold off something much worse.

His arm is bandaged thickly, both of them are. What did his father do?

Fear trickles down his shoulders, cold and heavy. Maybe he has a private room because child services found him, he’s not eighteen yet, that could be it.

“Hello—” and he cuts himself off.

The word came from his mouth, he’s sure of this. But the tone is abrasive and pitched in a way that can’t be his.

“Hello,” he tries again. “Hello. _Hello._ He-llo.” Maybe it’s the pain, maybe he’s been knocked out too long, maybe they had to do surgery on his throat and now he’s going to have a voice that won’t go with his face.

The door opens, revealing not a professional-looking adult in a suit, but a tired-looking boy in an Aglionby uniform. No, not Aglionby, the tie was the wrong color.

“Ronan?”

“Wrong room,” Adam says.

The boy rolls his eyes and walks in anyway, shutting the door behind him. “You really had to do it, didn’t you? You crazy fucker.”

“I—excuse me?”

“I had to tell Matthew you fell playing tennis. And now I’ve got to get you out of some two-month inpatient care bullshit to keep up the lie. Are you happy?”

He’s waiting for an answer, so Adam says, “no.”

The boy deflates. “It’s not just hard for you, Ronan. Mom can’t stay awake outside that shitty place, Matthew’s always sad because you’re—” he makes a broad gesture in Adam’s direction, “—whatever the fuck this is.”

Adam’s eyes subtly search for a Call For Help button. He doesn’t know this boy, he doesn’t know why he’s being called Ronan, he doesn’t know a Matthew, and his mom is in a shitty place but she stays awake just fine.

The boy takes Adam’s silence to keep up his monologue. “I’m working my ass off keeping us together after dad. If you’re going to pull this shit, do it where I don’t have to fucking fix it.”

“I don’t know who you are,” Adam blurts out. It’s difficult hearing all this. It’s like he’s eavesdropping. “I’m sorry about your family, though.”

The boy’s eyes narrow and he appraises Adam for a tense moment. “I’m getting a nurse,” he finally says to Adam’s relief.

He presses a button on the side of the bed Adam hadn’t noticed. A couple of minutes inch by and a nurse breezes in, her face pinched with sternness.

“Declan Lynch,” the nurse says tersely, “I hope you didn’t stress him out. I explicitly said he was not to be stressed.”

“I didn’t,” the boy, Declan, says, even though Adam is very stressed out.

The nurse pokes and prods at him, and shrugs. “It’s the pain meds,” she says in a much kinder tone, “we’ll worry if you’re not alright tomorrow, Ronan.”

She sets Declan with a pointed glare. “Visiting hours end in fifteen minutes.”

Then she just leaves. Like it’s nothing. She just leaves Adam alone with Declan and the terrifying realization that he has no clue what’s going on.

“Do you have a phone?” Adam asks him hoarsely.

Declan gives him a look full of worry, a look Adam does not care for one bit. If this one-sided conversation has told him anything, it’s that Declan is not on his side.

“I have yours,” Declan says handing Adam a sleek, black phone. Adam doesn’t have a phone and he almost says it. “You can’t use the internet,” Declan adds.

“Why not?” Adam asks, like it’s his phone. Which it’s not.

“They don’t let you when you do the shit you did.”

Adam can’t consider this, he has other problems, such as trying to hold a phone while his hands are wrapped up in layers of gauze. Adam fumbles with it, and in doing so catches his distorted reflection on the screen.

It’s not his face. The phone falls onto his lap.

“Are you okay?” Declan asks urgently. “Do you need help with your phone? Do you need help with anything?”

“No.” Adam’s voice is miles away from him.

He manages to turn on the phone and there’s no passcode but it doesn’t matter because there’s nothing useful on it. The weather app tells him he’s in Belfast, Ireland, or at least his brain, or soul, or _whatever_ is in Ireland. The app next to it has a crescent moon icon and when Adam presses it he finds that it’s some kind of journaling app.

The same crescent moon pops up with a sad face and scolds, “I’m crying! Ronan Lynch, you have zero entries!”

Adam expects this will be the most normal thing to happen today. He closes out of the app.

He wants to google _help the body I woke up in isn’t mine_ but he can’t use the internet and Declan is still watching him.

That must be what’s happening though. It’s ridiculous and impossible, but the fact of it stares back at him, shrouded and shadowy, when he turns the phone off. He turns it back on. Whatever makes Adam _Adam_ is stuck in someone else’s body. He flicks up and down on the weather app just to be doing something. Adam needs answers, he needs to find a way to not be in a hospital in Ireland, he needs his body.

He needs this to not be happening.

He can’t say anything to Declan, because he’s not sure Declan cares much for Ronan Lynch. The pain licks up under the skin of the arms. Adam doesn’t think Ronan Lynch cares much for Ronan Lynch.

“Did you really do it?” Declan whispers. “Tell me they were dreams.”

The question itself is sad, but the demand after is bizarre.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Adam replies because there’s no plausible lie for him to come up with here.

Declan’s face turns to marble. “Whatever. I’m not letting you get out of therapy. I read all of the brochures.”

“Okay,” Adam says.

Declan’s face turns to something else, unnatural only because it’s not an unkind expression. He touches Adam’s—Ronan’s—head and leaves.

The silence is huge and foreboding. He wishes this wasn’t a private room. He wishes he didn’t have to believe this. He wishes he could say something about this.

He wonders if the real Ronan is dead.

He’s not sure how he falls asleep but when Adam wakes up again, he’s in his miserably familiar bed with a miserably familiar ache in his ribs. Of course it was a dream, of course it was a very realistic dream.

You don’t recognize a dream while you’re in it, that’s why he accepted all of it. But this is real life, not a fantasy where he gets thrown into someone else’s world. And it wasn’t even a good world.

He lets himself lay in bed for a few more moments to pretend he has time.

He hauls himself up.

He lifts his shirt to check his ribs and his thoughts splinter.

Under a bruise, in shaky black marker, are the words ‘ _not a dream’_.

 

⊷⊶

 

Ronan can’t pinpoint when it happens. One second he’s in Adam’s bed replaying Adam’s father’s yelling and Adam’s father’s fists and Adam’s mother’s cold eyes and in the next, the ugly dividers become ugly hospital tiles.

He hadn’t been sleeping. He wasn’t going to take that risk. There was maybe a blur before it happened, or he blinked maybe, or maybe there was a string tied to whatever part of him was stuck here and it pulled him back into his own body.

He sees his arms, and he remembers that last thing.

“Fuck,” he mutters.

“I see you’re back to normal,” comes Declan’s unwelcome voice from a far corner.

“What the fuck are you on about?”

“You were being an idiot yesterday, that’s all.” As usual, Declan can’t leave it there. In an ugly imitation of Ronan’s voice, he continues, “You were all ‘oh I don’t know you, who are you?’”

Ronan can’t rise to the bait. “Was I doing anything weird?” He asks evenly.

“I just said—”

“ _Doing_ ,” Ronan snaps. “Like actions.”

“You messed around with your phone. You were being somewhat polite, which I know takes you effort. So that should count as an action.”

Ronan glowers at him. He despises Declan for being in this room with him, and for confirming everything. Adam Parrish was here, where Ronan’s body was. Adam was here, and he left here with some conclusions about Ronan. The conclusions probably weren’t very wrong.

But the big, blazing fact is that Adam Parrish is real. Not a made-up boy who’s life Ronan lived for a day.

It isn’t comforting now to be back in his own body and his own life, but he doesn’t ever want to return to Adam’s place again. He doesn't want the knowledge of Adam Parrish's life. What Ronan wants is to be gently crushed into smaller and smaller pieces until there’s no sign he’s ever existed.

“I’ll get you some jello,” Declan says before leaving.

Everything still hurts, and he still can’t ask anyone for help.

 

⊷⊶

 

Three days is an odd span of time. It's just enough time for Adam to start feeling comfortable again. To start believing That Event was truly nothing more than a dream. A mere side effect of his exhaustion.

On the fourth day, Adam wakes up to fluffy pillows and dappled sunlight.

First things first, he types out a message on Ronan Lynch’s journal app.

_'I am Adam Parrish typing this. I am currently in control of Ronan Lynch’s body, and I have reason to believe that he is in control of mine at the same time. Ronan Lynch—when you see this please confirm everything. We need to communicate and figure out why this is happening and how to stop this.’_

The arms are still bandaged, not as thick as before, and the hands are free. The fingers are slender and pretty, violin fingers. They are also covered in an erratic pattern of scars.

Adam still doesn’t want to consider that.

He takes stock of the room. There are piles of clutter all over, organized perhaps by color, or by the type of clutter, or some inane category Ronan Lynch came up with himself. There’s a large bookcase, full of books which don’t appear to be organized by anything. A large cage, with the bars set too far apart to trap anything inside. The room is so obviously lived in, and want rises in Adam.

He shoves it down. Someday, he’ll have it better, he’ll have it the best, and he’ll have it organized right.

Two texts come in, from Declan Lynch: _Just order pizza. Don’t visit mom._

Adam slips out of bed, side-steps a pile of laundry right next to an empty hamper, steps on a pencil, and makes it to Ronan Lynch’s desk. There are crinkled papers scribbled with doodles and smudges of color. The textbooks are untouched, and Adam leaves the room that way; it doesn’t feel right, none of it is his to touch.

Adam does whatever he needs to do without looking at a mirror. When he catches peripheral glimpses of skin, he pretends he doesn’t.

The house, as he explores it, confirms Ronan Lynch is rich. It’s subtle in the richness. There are cracks in the paint, but there’s luster too. It’s beautiful and quaint, vibrant and shy.

He sits at the breakfast nook, out of place and small.

Ronan’s phone has wifi, so he reads the plot synopsis for Freaky Friday and deletes the search history. He googles various iterations of _my mind is stuck in someone else’s body_ until the mental health links stop showing up and he finds himself ten pages into a paranormal forum. Then he deletes the history again.

The whole time, Declan has been texting for updates. The latest one reads _I’m coming home if you don’t reply._

Adam texts him: _What’s the number for the pizza?_

Declan immediately texts back: _Seriously?_

Adam reads his text again. It’s a simple text. Nothing incriminating about it. Ronan Lynch has been through something, he should be allowed to forget phone numbers.

Adam texts back: _Yes?_

Declan calls.

Adam stares down at the phone, letting it ring.

It’s not like Declan Lynch’s first thought would be  _someone is controlling my brother’s body,_ that’s nobody’s first thought.

With this in mind, Adam picks up.

“Did you seriously pick up your phone?” Declan asks. “Ronan?”

Ronan Lynch does not pick up calls from his brother.

“Yes?”

“You sound—do you need me to come home?”

Adam gulps. “Can you just tell me the number for the pizza?”

“You have the number saved on your phone. Are you good?”

Adam ignores the question. “And how do I pay?”

“Jesus fuck, man. Use your credit card, in your wallet?”

The need to confirm, to make sure this is absolutely okay for him to do, is on the tip of his tongue, but that would be too much. “Okay, thanks.” Then he adds, “man.”

Adam winces and hangs up.

He opens the journal app again and adds— _‘I used your credit card to order pizza. Should I pay you back?’_

He backspaces on the question because how would he pay Ronan back? Instead, he types, _‘I’ll be keeping a log of what happens while I’m in control of your body. If I’m correct and you’re in control of mine as well, then you should keep a log too, for whenever this happens again after you read this.’_

Adam is not optimistic enough to think this will be the last time.

He finds Ronan’s wallet back in his room. Adam orders the pizza, and he hates the pretty black credit card and how easy it is to use. When he opens the door for the pizza, he hates the paved, winding road and the blooming garden.

The pizza is delicious, but he eats it with a disembodied hunger. It’s the same as the pain; a step out of reach, unfamiliar, not his. He has never felt hunger or pain this way.

Adam doesn’t get to enjoy the pizza for long, as there is a rhythmic knocking on the door. He ignores it. He needs Ronan’s life to restricted to this house, he can’t deal with more. They’ll go away, they’ll just go away.

The knocking persists.

“It’s Henry!” a chipper voice calls from the other side. “I know you’re in there Lynch, I have homework.”

Ronan might want his homework.

Adam heaves himself to the door and swings it open, revealing a boy with gravity-defying hair. He walks right by Adam and lobbies his backpack to the couch, then proceeds to toss himself onto it like he’s been here a million times.

“The homework?” Adam reminds him.

Henry gives him a weird look. “Did you hit your head?”

“Yes,” Adam says, snatching at this one strand of luck.

Henry’s eyes widened. “Oh shit. I mean, you never reply to my texts anyway but I just thought you dreamt up a new monster pet so—why are you walking like that?”

Adam stops in front of the armchair across from Henry. “Like what?”

Henry scrutinizes him. “Like not you.” He does a shimmy with his shoulders. “Like you care where you’re going.”

“I hit my head,” Adam says.

“Right. I’m sure that explains it.” Henry’s sharp gaze doesn’t change but he glues on a concerned frown. “How did it happen anyway?”

“I don’t remember.” Then, quickly, because he’s milking the head injury, “what did you mean about the dreamt up monster pet?”

“Oh I don’t know, you say Chainsaw’s just a raven, but I have my doubts.”

This only serves to confuse Adam more. He’s missing some key backstory or an inside joke. He opens the journal app again and adds, _'is "dream” a code word for something?’_

“I’m writing down everything,” Adam says because Henry is still giving him an unnerving look, “since I hit my head.”

“Since you hit your head,” Henry parrots.

Adam’s lips turn down. “Look, I’m not feeling well so if you have the homework I’ll be taking it.”

Henry’s eyebrows shoot up. “You were serious? Is Ronan Lynch turning a new page?” His eyes flicker down to Adam’s—Ronan’s—arms and back up. “Hitting your head made you a brand new person, did it?”

“Homework,” Adam says flatly, even though he’s starting to realize now that Ronan will not, in fact, want his homework.

“I would have hit you on the head myself if I knew this could happen,” he says cheerfully, but hands Adam a moleskine planner covered in stickers. The center of it is a sticker-free rectangle, engraved with the name Henry Cheng.

As Adam starts to take pictures of the assignments, Henry kicks his feet up on the coffee table between them. “Wow. You’re actually doing it. I need a moment to soak this in.”

Adam’s knuckles tighten on the phone and he reminds himself that Henry thinks he’s talking to Ronan.

Henry leaves soon after he finishes his soaking (“you’re being civilized and it’s making me uncomfortable, take some melatonin, Lynch”), and takes Adam’s tension with him. Henry knows Ronan well enough to tell something was off just by the way Adam walked in his body. Adam can’t walk like Ronan Lynch, or talk like Ronan Lynch. He can’t be like Ronan Lynch.

Besides Declan’s continuous texts, nobody else checks up on him. Unlike Ronan’s room, the rest of the house has stale touches of a home that might have once been lived in.

He intends to read everything over on the journal app and go to sleep but he gets stuck on the first message he wrote in the morning. He reads it once, twice, several times, and his blood goes cold.

Adam wishes fervently, pointlessly that Ronan’s mind is floating around in the air while Adam is in his place.

It’s pointless because Adam’s boss told him he acted weird on his last shift. Because he woke up with letters he did not write on his body. Because he woke up with a bruise he did not remember receiving. Adam berates himself for not thinking of this first.

Ronan must know.

He puts in one last note: _‘If I’m correct and we’re switching bodies, you know how my parents are and you know what my father does.’_

And he stops there. There’s nothing else he can follow that up with.

When Adam wakes up in his own bed, relief floods him first—because he has his body back. Then comes the despair—because he has his life back too. That pizza was so good. He has one second of bleak, reluctant hope, that again, all of it was a dream.

He curls over, and the hope shreds.

There’s another message, this time on his hand. _‘Check your math notebook.’_

Adam’s notebooks are jammed with words and numbers; he can’t afford to waste space. Ronan’s writing is sharp and bold and stands out in the midst of Adam’s scrawny cluster— _‘tell me how to do your damn jobs so you don’t get fired.’_

He can't deny it.

It’s real. It’s so acutely real. There’s some boy across the ocean who knows his embarrassing life and there’s nothing Adam can do about it. He rubs his thumb over his braided keychain. It’s the only thing anchoring him here.

He reads the message again and again and again. The page following it are notes from his classes in Ronan’s handwriting.

Adam presses his face into his notebook. He takes a moment to hate it. He hates it so much.

He flips to a blank page of his notebook and begins writing.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some internalized homophobia near the end, where ronan and henry are hanging out.

 

It doesn’t stop.

The next time Adam wakes up in Ronan’s place, he checks the journal app first. There’s a string of replies to almost everything he’d written:

_‘Man can you fucking type normally? You sound like you’re on some secret mission. Yeah, roger that I can confirm everything you said. We’re fucking switching bodies or brains or whatever the fuck.’_

_‘You can use my credit card whenever, I don’t care.’_

_‘Dream means dream. Damn you really think this is some spy shit.’_

Adam flips the phone over and slaps it down on a pillow, annoyance flaring up in him. The great injustice of this whole situation isn’t even that they’re switching places, it’s that Adam can’t physically tell Ronan Lynch how much of an asshole he is.

The bandages make their presence known with his sudden movement. It’s itchy and there’s an uncomfortable slickness from an ointment underneath. The ache is dull, but it spikes up when he twists the arm. His arm, for now.

How did it feel for Ronan, to go from the wounds here to the wound that was Adam’s whole life? He’s wrong, he wouldn’t be able to physically tell Ronan anything; he wouldn’t be able to even meet him. Not with what he knows; not with what Ronan knows.

His annoyance ebbs as he circles around the clear reason for this pain and turns the phone back on to read the rest of Ronan’s messages.

_‘Shit you gotta know—I have appointments every Thursday. If you’re at my spot on Thursdays call “appointment lady” and cancel them.’_

It’s a Thursday, so Adam makes the call.

_‘I don’t give a fuck if you go to school but I’m supposed to go back in a month. Call Cheng to carpool. I screenshot my schedule.’_

_‘I got a pet bird. Her name is Chainsaw. Her food is next to her cage, put some in the bowl. Also, she’s a baby so don’t pull any shit around her.’_

Chainsaw is not in the cage. Adam hopes the part about her being a raven was a joke.

He explains his brothers and _‘if you gotta see Declan again that sucks but don’t be fucking nice to him. Kick his ass. If you can’t do that don’t talk to him.’_

There’s no sharing of sympathy or concern over what’s going on in his words; it’s as if Ronan has accepted their fate and is now passing on instructions to Adam like he’s a babysitter.

_‘Also, painkillers in the nightstand if you get pissy.’_

Adam reads thoroughly, prolonging the journey down to the part about his parents. When he gets to his last message he scrolls up and rereads everything, on the off chance he missed something important. He didn’t.

Adam is well-versed now in hiding the evidence of his abuse. But in the past, reactions to it would range from the sympathetic looks of elementary school teachers to awkward questions from other children to parents offering nervous smiles before quickly glancing away to endless other inactions, all whispering _this is just how it is_.

He can’t fathom how that’ll translate over to all  _this_.

Ronan’s last message is darker, and bolder, even though the font and color are the same.

_‘What do I do.’_

He can’t discern the reaction here. It doesn’t translate.

He does Ronan’s homework because Ronan did his and Adam needs the routine of studying. They share some of the same subjects.

Adam asks: _‘How old are you?’_

He struggles to copy Ronan’s handwriting—words that demand to be noticed where they stand, at best, he keeps them within the college-ruled lines.

Before Adam goes to sleep, he types on the journal app:

_'You can avoid it: There’s a lot of noise, don’t flinch when any of it happens. At least don’t get caught flinching. Always make eye contact, don’t look down and don’t look past him. Don’t fight back and don’t run.’_

He’s not sure how Ronan will fare with this advice, because it’s not good advice. Of the three, Adam can only manage the third.

He almost erases the message, changes it to something distant like every one of Ronan’s words. But he keeps a part of him there, under the watchful eyes of the cartoonish moon.

It’s fair then, that Ronan put a part of himself here too. _'_ _What happened to your arms?'_

 

⊶⊷

 

A honed skill: fitting in.

All he has to do is belong in Adam’s world, to blend and be unseen. He’s an expert at this, he practices almost every night he fails to stay awake.

Ronan does precisely what Adam’s schedules dictate. He memorizes the ins and outs of the factory and warehouse jobs and he asks Boyd if he can do desk work instead. Without a doubt, he loses customers through the phone calls and emails, but he doesn’t lose the job.

He meshes into the walls of the double-wide, into the walls of Aglionby, anything to go unnoticed and get the day done as swift as possible.

That’s how he plans to live this life, quietly, like he tries to live his nightmares.

Except that’s a flimsy strategy, because he barely survives his nightmares, and their effects inevitably show up on his skin. Ronan is grasping at a rope guaranteed to snap.

Back in his own body, Ronan rubs his thumb over the ‘ _you can avoid it’_ , willing it to disappear. The first two are easy, the third—not so much. There are endless variations to what he wants to reply with: _should I call the cops, should I deck him, should I tell someone, can I tell someone._

But he can’t; because in the end, Adam would return alone to face the consequences. What if he did any of those things and they never switched again?

He doesn’t have the right words to say. He picks the ones that are the least wrong, but the shards of wrongness that remain are infuriating.

It’s discomforting to care for someone like this. Adam is a stranger, and yet he’s not a stranger.

Ronan is vividly aware of the tiny white scar over the knuckle of Adam’s index finger. He’s aware of its roughness.

That’s not something a stranger would know.

He answers Adam’s question: _‘Some big ass birds pecked them out.’_

It’s not a lie.

 

⊶⊷

 

He’s insufferable, Adam decides, reading the message.

He welcomes the annoyance, an apparent knee-jerk reaction to most things Ronan says.

He goes to the bathroom and splashes some water on his face. Adam stares into the mirror. Ever since he saw his reflection on Ronan’s phone, he’s been avoiding this, the looking bit.

It’s Ronan Lynch’s face staring back at him.

He’s a fawnish brown, desaturated in the way all things are on winter mornings. His hair can’t decide if it’s curly or a bird’s nest, it’s a little long on the front, and it softens the anger of his cheekbones. His lips are turned down with remnants of Adam’s annoyance; the expression sits like a default setting. Ronan’s face is suited for negativity. Adam aims for a smile, but it comes off as more of a grimace. He sticks his tongue out. Makes his eyebrows jump. Tugs the ears.

It all behaves the way skin and faces behave.

Adam pulls a series of unsettling expressions, saved only by Ronan not being ugly. Another insufferable thing—Ronan was very handsome. Adam rubs his thumb over the sharp corner of his jaw, all the way down to the tip of his chin. He touches his lips and his eyes snare on the line of a scar peeking out from the bandages.

He leaves the bathroom.

 

⊶⊷

_‘I’m 17._

_‘Me too. 18 this July.’_

_‘November for me.’_

_‘So I’m older than you.’_

_‘So what? The fuck is with the tone?’_

_‘There’s no tone. You can’t hear my voice.’_

⊶⊷

 

Ronan is so used to orchestrating his own pain it’s jarring to receive it from someone besides himself.

Worse than the pain is the feeling of failure. Adam told him how to avoid it. He doesn’t know where he messes up, he doesn’t know if it even matters. Adam _Adam_ wouldn’t receive the immediate brunt force, but he’d return to know it happened.

When the pain isn’t physical, it’s still an entity attached to the double-wide.

It exists in the way the air there suffocates him. It’s the constant, weighted threat of what could happen with one wrong sound or action.

The desire to slice through this air with vicious words is overwhelming. Each time this desire shoots to a peak, Ronan stamps it down by writing for Adam.

_‘Your school is lame. Wrote some fun jokes on the blackboard.’_

_‘These classes you take are a pain in the ass.’_

Ronan would very much prefer to be aloof and write just what he needs to and be done with it, but writing these useless messages is his only distraction from the atmosphere of Adam’s home. He writes sometimes on the back steps of the double-wide, sometimes during breaks at Boyd’s, sometimes by moonlight to stay awake.

_‘Speaking of pain in the ass, your Latin teacher blows.’_

 

⊶⊷

_‘Dude you need to quit doing my homework. I’m not gonna turn that shit in.’_

_‘Then don’t. I’m doing it for myself.’_

⊶⊷

 

Adam wants to keep their correspondence detached, at least what’s possible with Ronan having access to practically every crevice of his life.

But he can’t.

Ronan logs Adam’s day in an insufferable manner, he scribbles insufferable comments, there is no end to his insufferability.

Adam can’t let that go.

_‘Is pizza all you eat? Your face is going to become more oil than skin cells.’_

_‘Just order some groceries you picky fucker.’_

_‘Holy shit I didn’t know rich people actually did that. So you just throw money around like it's nothing.’_

_‘Yeah whatever man I’m not seeing fruit in my fridge.’_

 

⊶⊷

Not that Adam can afford it but:  _‘What’s in your shampoo? Doesn't smell like ass.'_

It’s dreamt up, so:  _‘Bog water and bird shit.’_

⊶⊷

 

There’s no order or system to it. Adam intends to make one, but Ronan is so mulishly uncooperative it doesn’t happen. Somehow, this results in them holding multiple, barbed conversations about different topics on either end.

They don’t talk about how sometimes Adam wakes up in Ronan’s bed with reddened knuckles and a splitting headache, or how Ronan wakes up in Adam’s with purplish bruises. They fill that gap with pasted paragraphs and links from dubious articles, anything with a tie to their situation. But even those devolve into stupid arguments.

_‘The link you left me is about alien-human interactions. I didn’t really look at it but I think it’s nsfw.’_

_‘Why did you specify that you didn’t really look at it?’_

_‘Anyway, it would help if you’d take this seriously.’_

_‘Fuck you. That link had body switch come up 50 times when I used advanced search.’_

_‘It wasn’t the same as what’s happening to us!’_

_‘So you did look at it lmao.’_

Adam buys a new notebook. When scrolling through one entry gets tiresome, Ronan opens a new one.

The googly-eyed moon icon buzzes with joy.

 

⊶⊷

 

It’s shocking that Richard Gansey III knows his name.

More shocking than being propositioned about dead Welsh kings. Adam reluctantly accepts the magic of it, he’d be a hypocrite not to. The thrill of having friends, or the possibility of friends is cut with the worry of how he’ll make the space of having them.

“Can I just say something?” Gansey asks as he drives them to Nino’s.

Adam is sick of pizza, but Nino’s is okay because of the choppy-haired waitress. There had been a slow moment, the first few times they’d gone, where Adam wanted to place his finger or maybe his mouth on the indent of her cupid’s bow. But those moments passed, and now she mostly looks at Gansey like she wants to spill iced tea over his shirt.

“You can,” Adam allows.

“You’re quite different from when I first met you.”

The only sound is Gansey’s roommate, Noah, biting straight through his jawbreaker in the backseat.

Later, he writes for Ronan: _‘I’ve been hanging out with these two guys, Gansey and Noah. We met because I helped fix Gansey’s car. In case that comes up. Please don’t be weird around them.’_

Following their next switch, Ronan: _‘Dude I got this, that Dick Gansey guy is fucking in love with me.’_

Adam: _‘I’m not even gonna ask.’_

 

⊶⊷

 

_‘If you’re here on Sunday I’m going to church.’_

Adam reads this a minute before he finds out Chainsaw being a raven was not a joke.

Chainsaw is, in fact, a real bird who’s a raven whose real name is Chainsaw. No longer a concept, she screeches from her imposing stance on the bedpost. Her beak clacks and she seems just about ready to eat Adam’s eyeballs.

He grasps the phone like a lifeline and flees Ronan’s room, slamming the door on the raven’s terrifying wingspan.

The rest of the message informs that Declan picks him up at 9, Matthew would be there, and _‘don’t be fucking nice to Declan’_.

There’s nothing else provided, nothing on church etiquette, if that’s a thing, nothing on what to expect, no tips, no tricks. It would be remiss of Adam to expect otherwise. He watches with lackluster acceptance as the time goes from 8:58 to 9:00 and knocking ensues from downstairs.

All in all, the morning is shaping up to be unpleasant.

He opens the door to Declan and the cold. “Hi.”

Declan’s eyes widen in surprise and Adam has a split second to wonder if even a simple  _hi_ was beyond Ronan’s level of kindness before Declan snaps, “you’re not ready yet? Fucking of course you aren’t.”

Adam’s shoulders rise up in defense. “I just woke up.”

Declan’s mouth thins and he sighs. “At least you're sleeping. If you’re not ready in five minutes we’re leaving without you.”

Adam is partial to that course of action, but it feels like a betrayal to not do Ronan’s things when Ronan is on the other side doing Adam’s things. He trudges up the stairs and peeks in through the door.

Chainsaw is back on the bedpost, regal and ugly. Her head inclines in an oddly human, inviting way and she studies Adam as he edges his way in. She’s much smaller now, without the screeching and flapping, but she’s also not the baby Ronan claimed her to be. She allows Adam to approach her and stays still as he raises a hand up to her head.

Half of him thinks  _you idiot, she’ll eat your finger,_ while the other half is consumed by the universal desire to win the affection of an unaffectionate animal.

She nudges her beak against his index finger and flies to the window. She pecks at the glass, and her head twists back to him. The beadiness in her eyes is unnerving, like she’s staring right through Ronan’s skin.

It’s paranoia. She’s just a bird. Adam lets her out.

Adam finds a crisp dress shirt and slacks in the closet. Winding leather straps have taken the place of Ronan’s bandages. The scars are bearable to look at now (out of the corner of his eye), shallow and shiny in the light, hidden by the bracelet strands. They are only awful in their number. Adam carefully rolls the sleeves down over them and puts on a suit jacket.

It’s eleven minutes when he leaves the house, but Declan’s Volvo is still waiting. A massive boy with massive curls leaps out of the passenger seat and pulls Adam into a hug.

He’s saying something, loud and happy, and Adam dazedly realizes this is Matthew. The hug is like laying in warm laundry. A mass of emotion wrapped in barbed wire ends clog Adam’s throat and he squeezes Matthew’s shoulder until it disappears.

Declan gives him a once-over in the car. “Not too wrinkled. You don’t look like a trash heap for once.”

 _What would Ronan say?_ He eyes Declan’s suit; it’s expensive, not a wrinkle in sight, and the collar is tight around his neck. “You look like you’re about to sell me into a credit scam.”

“That one’s new,” Declan mutters as Matthew laughs in the backseat.

Church is a blur of Adam pretending to know what to do and trying to not fall asleep. The lunch after is nicer, because Matthew laughs at everything and Declan leaves for a phone call five minutes in.

Back in the house, he burrows under the covers, the air drafty from the weather outside. He should be mad about today. Adam tries to call back the frustration of the morning, but he thinks of Matthew’s hug and Chainsaw pushing against his finger, and anger is suddenly beyond his reach.

He gives a polite revision of his morning thoughts: _‘Why didn’t you tell me you had church earlier?’_

Two days later, Ronan’s response reads: _‘Because I decided to go the day before. Why does it matter?’_

_‘I could have prepared!’_

_‘How? Were you gonna memorize the fucking bible?’_

When Adam sees this three days later, he debates listing the numerous things Ronan could have told him to make it easier. But Chainsaw knocks over her food and refuses to eat it off the floor so instead, he types: _‘You’re a shithead. And your bird’s a shithead too.’_

 

⊶⊷

_‘You don’t really act Irish.’_

_‘If you have something irishphobic to say then don’t half-ass it.’_

_‘Not a lot of green in your wardrobe. No red hair.”_

_‘Fucking hell.’_

_‘You say dude a lot. No ambiguous European accent.’_

_‘I traveled around. Do you expect Irish people to have fucking leprechauns too?’_

_‘Just you, actually.’_

⊶⊷

 

Another skill: making his insomnia look couture.

This one is hindering here, leaving Ronan unequipped to be in charge of a body that yearns for sleep.

Adam runs on a trainwreck version of exhaustion—heavy eyelids, jittery nerves, hollow stomach. Nothing fashionable about any of that.

How did he stay awake like this?

On some switches, the strain of it is easier.

They’re at Nino’s, him and Gansey because Noah was smart enough to opt out. Ronan sits alone in the booth, fidgeting with a chipped fingernail.

He brings his hand up close to his face and observes the little curve of knuckle. Ronan urges it to bend, and it obeys, as joints often do. He does this to each finger until he gets to his thumb, and this doesn’t bend, something goes wrong in the process and it protrudes out. Alarmingly, Ronan thinks he’s broken Adam’s thumb.

(It’s Adam’s thumb when something goes wrong.)

But no, there’s no pain and when he flexes, it locks back into place.

Gansey chooses that moment to return. “Adam, what are you doing?”

“Dude,” Ronan says, demonstrating his new discovery. “Look at that. Double jointed. Fucking neat, right?”

Gansey gapes at him, then with a touch of concern, asks, “did you not know you were double-jointed?”

Ronan opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again to say, “I just thought it was cool. Wouldn’t expect you to understand simple pleasures.”

That seems to hold enough passive-aggressive distaste for the rich to be Adam-like.

It passes for Gansey and Ronan is punished with a long tangent on exactly how much Gansey loves bones.

“We were at this archaeological dig and—” he cuts off, and punishes Ronan even further with a whispered, “you’re staring at her again.”

“What?” Ronan snaps. “Staring at who?”

Gansey’s eyebrows arch. “The waitress.”

Ronan casts said waitress a fleeting glance. “So? She’s got cool shit in her hair.”

“Sometimes, you’re quite—” he tilts his head “—nevermind. I could wingman for you if you want.”

Ronan wants to leave.

“No. I don’t want you to get us banned.” His tone doesn’t have as much ice as he intends.

Adam never told him he liked someone, not that Ronan cares, but it would have been helpful. For something. For interactions.

Ronan takes what he decides to be the higher road: _‘Do you want me to hit on the so-called cute waitress for you? I can do that. I got you, dude.’_

Next switch, with an insulting number of exclamation marks, Adam had written: _‘Do not!!!!! Just take my notes!!’_

Ronan, brimming with relief: _‘Oh right. Forgot you were married to homework.’_

 

⊶⊷

_‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what the fuck I did. I didn’t do anything. He was so pissed I don’t know why.’_

_‘God. No, I’m sorry. You didn’t do anything. I wish we could make this stop so you wouldn’t have to feel this. I’m really sorry. It’s shit.’_

_‘Don’t fucking apologize, yeah it’s shit and you don’t deserve it.’_

_‘Well, why did you apologize?’_

Ronan doesn’t answer this, but the margins of Adam’s notebook are covered in doodles of flowers exactly like the ones from the hospital.

⊶⊷

 

Ronan warns him about school a week early, and Adam naively thinks this is a milestone in their tentative friendship.

Throughout the week, Ronan reminds him multiple times: _‘you don’t have to go. In fact, you shouldn’t go.’_

So of course, Adam decides to go.

He calls Henry. “Can you pick me up?”

“Why?” Henry whines. “You drove yourself fine yesterday.”

“My head’s acting up.”

There’s some annoyed murmuring on the other end. “Fine. Give me a bit, since you've chosen to be a hermit.”

Adam gets ready. He makes toast, he feeds Chainsaw, he catches up on Ronan’s messages. He kicks his feet up on the coffee table as Henry had done, and immediately puts them back down.

It’s over half an hour later when Henry’s car honks a staccato beat from the driveway.

Henry is yawning when Adam gets in the car and asks, “when’s school?”

He ignores the question, staring at Adam with disbelieving eyes. “Who are you and what have you done with Ronan Lynch?”

Adam’s throat goes dry and dreadful, but Henry only reaches out and loosens the knot of his tie. He tugs it down until two of the buttons pop open.

“Was that like, a joke? I forgot you knew how to button a shirt properly. And knot a tie.”

Adam concentrates on breathing normally. His cover wasn’t blown. God, he really did treat this like a secret mission. Who was going to think this wasn’t actually Ronan? Nobody, that’s who.

He starts driving, and Ronan had not warned Adam about this.

Henry drives like he believes he’s a bad driver, like he’s navigating his way around an accident already occurring. Adam leans his head dejectedly against the window and winces back upright when Henry miscalculates a turn.

There’s a moment where he jolts up with his car and glances at Adam frantically. “Do you think I ran over something? I’ll speed up if I did.”

“That was a speed bump.”

They drive on with several similar events. When they arrive at the school, parking is a trickling, back-and-forth ordeal with abrupt starts and stops.

“We’re late,” Adam says regretfully, and at Henry’s perplexed gaze, adds, “which I love. Love being late. Fuck punctuality.”

Henry’s smile is wary. “You should see a brain surgeon.”

All in all, Adam considers it a win for not choking on _fuck_.

In retaliation for not mentioning Henry’s driving, Adam turns in all of Ronan’s homework. He enjoys the teachers’ astonishment, as well as Henry’s for the two classes they share.

He adjusts to Ronan’s school with ease; most of its differences from Aglionby are surface-level. Rich people are the same everywhere.

The one challenging part is he can’t stare at himself. After that first time in the bathroom, it’s become a force of habit to catch and hold any glimpse of his reflection. It’s impossible not to. Whatever higher being was out there sacrificed a lot of personality points to make Ronan so offensively attractive.

He keeps himself in check for most of the day until he passes by a large, black window, and his self-control dies. It’s a shrouded reflection, like the one off Ronan’s phone screen or the shiny black lining of his oven. His eyes stand out here; they’re the flinty blue of an impending, inescapable storm. Adam’s own eyes are blue but he can’t remember anything about them when looking at Ronan’s.

“What are you _doing._ ” Henry roughly checks his shoulder.

“I had something stuck in my teeth,” Adam says, mildly gleeful. He’s getting good at being like Ronan.

Henry scrunches up his nose. “No words,” and then, contradicting himself,  “there are teachers on the other side of that.”

“Hope they enjoyed the show.”

“Hope you know you’ll be single forever.”

 

⊶⊷

_‘You need to fucking stop checking out my face everywhere. It’s fucking awkward explaining it to Cheng.’_

_‘Sorry I need to look at it to remind myself to be the world’s biggest jackass.’_

_‘Does it work? I’ll stare at your face for an hour next switch to get your shitbastard attitude down.’_

⊶⊷

 

They’re at an authentic Chinese place, so Ronan has his guard up. Henry only ever wants to eat at trendy, fast food Asian fusion places because “if I wanted authentic, I’d eat at home!”

“Our server is hot,” he comments.

Ronan agrees but he doesn’t turn to check him out again. Once is enough. He’s envious of how easily Henry can do and say these things. That’ll never happen for him.

Golden lights and twangy meditation music don’t match well with these thoughts.

“You’re trying to distract me,” Ronan says. “Why am I here?”

“Don’t make this sound like a hostage situation. I asked if you wanted to hang out that’s why you’re here.” Henry taps a chopstick on Ronan’s nose. “Did you forget because of the head injury?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Ronan says wryly. “So you’re not gonna say some dumb shit?”

“Just two dudes getting fancy Chinese food,” Henry assures.

The waiter approaches their table with heaping bowls of sesame chicken and chow mein. With the food and steam between them for protection, Henry’s smile turns guilty.

“Well, actually—” never a good start to a sentence.

Ronan groans.

“Can you chill? I just want to know if you’re doing good.”

“Fuck off.”

“People care about you Lynch—” Ronan gags—“I don’t care if it kills you inside, it’s true.”

Ronan scoops a messy pile of noodles onto Henry’s plate so he doesn’t have to acknowledge this.

“Come on, are you okay? You act weird at school, you keep staring at yourself, you’re doing _homework_ —”

The only visible exit is blocked by a poshly dressed group exchanging back slaps and business cards. Henry tends to have heart-to-hearts in places difficult to run from.

“I’m good, man,” Ronan grounds out, spearing a piece of chicken with one chopstick. “You’re really gonna do this here.”

“I am.”

“Fine. This guy in America keeps randomly taking over my body. Like a few times a week. He’s the one doing that shit.”

“You are very attached to this head injury charade,” Henry muses. “Alright then, don’t tell me. I didn’t expect you to.”

They eat in tense silence, and Henry’s eyes keep flicking between Ronan’s wrists and his chow mein.

Ronan sighs. “Fuck, just say the rest.”

“I’m not stupid, Lynch.”

“Sure.”

Henry picks up a piece of sesame chicken from his plate and puts it on Ronan’s, even though the bowl itself next to Ronan’s plate, and still full.

“I’m not gonna tell you some motivational self-help book crap.”

“Cool.”

“But the sentiment, it’s here amongst us. I’m sending you self-help book vibes.” Henry makes a wafting gesture with his hands.

“All I’m getting is the egg shampoo you made me crack over your hair this morning.”

“Aw, really? I’m getting the satisfaction of being a caring friend.”

“Eat your fucking noodles, Cheng.”

Henry eats his noodles, wearing a triumphant smile he didn’t deserve.

The rest of lunch is Ronan showing Henry new Robobee designs on a napkin, and wondering if the server’s hands are double-jointed. He makes Henry pay because emotional intimacy comes at a cost and gets a to-go box for most of his food.

He microwaves a tiny portion in the evening to commit to the act that he got it for himself.

For Adam: _‘Eat this shit. Or throw it out if you don’t.’_

Ronan wishes Adam could feel full eating this, but even the taste has to mean something after days of canned food and stale sandwiches. He doesn’t expect Adam “stupid head injury excuse” Parrish to figure it out.

He gets away with it three more switches before Adam figures it out.

_‘You know you’re the one getting clogged arteries out of this, right? Like it’s all going in your stomach?’_

Out of spite, he goes and buys a whole slew of fruits and makes a salad out of it.

_‘Enjoy the damn antioxidants.’_

Adam clearly does, as Ronan finds when he’s back in his body. The salad is gone, and so are all the extra raspberries from their little plastic boxes.

_'That was actually good? I didn’t know you could cook.’_

Ronan is begrudgingly amused that Adam considers salads to be cooking.

_‘Tone down the surprise, asshole. Obviously I know how to cook, I live alone.’_

 

⊶⊷

 

“You’re still living in that creaky old place?”

“You know I am.”

“All by yourself?”

“You know I am,” Ronan repeats wearily.

His mom tuts, and draws a sweeping line with her charcoal. The wind is quiet because Ronan asked it to be. He has no interest in running into the ocean to save her newsprint sketches.

Aurora Lynch lives in a small, beachy dream place Ronan doesn’t remember creating. It closes on one end several feet behind her cottage, at a sloping fixture of jagged rocks. On the other end, hidden by the rolling sand dunes, it’s closed off by a formidable boulder and a smattering of lively tide pools. Ronan doesn’t count the waves as a boundary, they were here before the dream place.

It’s a very large prison.

“Pass me that brown charcoal, please.”

As he does, a little bit of its dust falls on the blankets they laid out.

“It would be nice if you could leave. Move into the school dorms, or live with Henry and your other friends."

“Those are Henry’s friends, not mine.”

She makes the tutting sound again. “They could be if you lived closer to them. You could see your brothers more often too.”

“Don’t care to. I see Matthew all the time. Hard no on Declan.” Ronan squints at her. “Are you kicking me out?”

Aurora fixes him with an unimpressed look. “All I’m saying is it would be good for you to be somewhere else.”

“What about you, mom? You don’t want to be somewhere else?” He asks the question to hurt himself.

She shrugs, and her smile is faded and unfocused. “It’s so nice here—the sea, the air.” She goes to squeeze his cheek, even though he doesn’t have the baby fat for it anymore. “No creaky stairs.”

“You don’t want to go anywhere else?” He presses.

She touches her smudged hand to his hair. “A grocery store, maybe. Have you eaten a vegetable today?”

“Not one this week,” Ronan answers dutifully.

“As expected.” She combs a hand through his hair, and it flops right back over his forehead. “It’s gotten a little long right here.”

“Should I shave it off?” He has no intention of doing so.

She laughs, and Ronan clings to the sound. “If you want. Such a handsome boy, we’ll make it work.”

Ronan wants to leave right then, but he remains a while longer before heading to the third boundary: a twisting, gravelly road. Sometimes he walks here, but today he drove, and he drives the car to the grocery store to buy raspberries.

On his phone, amongst several other messages, Adam had written: _‘When I get out of here, we should actually meet up. You can teach me to cook so I don’t live off ramen in college.’_

It’s from three days ago; a switch should be coming up soon. They haven’t gone more than five days without one.

They both separately, tacitly have come to the conclusion that this may never end. That they may never find a solution, that the body swapping would be their new reality. It’s not so new anymore.

He parks in a messy, obstructing manner and replies to the messages, including: _‘You deserve hypertension after talking all that shit about me clogging my arteries.’_

Ronan goes back inside the creaky Lynch house. He goes up to his bed. He goes to sleep.

In the dream, Ronan’s hands scrape into the dirt until he uncovers roses. They aren’t growing there, they lay as if someone buried their bouquet. Ronan tries to get them, but his hands merely snatch back with thorns. Every time he reaches for the roses, the petals, it’s the thorns embedding themselves in his palms.

“Give me roses without thorns,” he pleads.

“For who?” The roses ask him, or the trees, or the whole dream.

For his mother, for Matthew. He would come away with roses then.

“For me,” Ronan says.

 

⊶⊷

 

Adam wakes up in Ronan’s bed with small punctures all over his palms. They’re blotting over with blood.

It’s a needle-like pain and he’s glad Ronan didn’t wake up to feel it.

He finds a first aid kit and disinfects before putting bandages over them with care. He eats the raspberries and does Ronan’s homework.

He has to say something.

Before going to sleep, Adam writes: ‘ _I_ _wish the birds would stop pecking.’_

It’s so incomplete. But he had nothing complete to say.

 

⊶⊷

_‘You think ley lines got something to do with our shit?’_

_‘Maybe. We’re getting more books on it. And we’re going to some psychics soon.’_

_‘You’ve got witches too? Man, your town is fucking creepy.’_

_‘Psychics. Don’t be shitty if you’re there.’_

⊶⊷

 

These three months wash past them, simultaneously slow and fast. Then:

_‘Ronan we found this forest. I don’t know what to say, you need to see it yourself.’_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (i know biting through a jawbreaker isn't a human thing to do, but if it isn't clear, noah's not dead here lol.)
> 
> thanks to my friends and some very patient people for putting up with me being stupid about this fic.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> indirect? mentions of internalized homophobia when ronan and henry hang out, i promise that's not gonna be a big theme here :(

 

Ronan doesn’t like seeing the forest.

He especially doesn’t like the big boulder that greets them like a toll booth a hundred steps in. He doesn’t like that it’s the same boulder as the one in his dream place back home, and he hates that his handwriting is on it.

“Adam? You okay?” Blue peels at the uplifted flaps of bark on a protruding root, but her eyes are on him. She’s in a big milk foam skirt begging to snag on something.

Ronan can’t say anything about it though—Adam’s left shoe has a hole on the heel end and the dirt’s wetness seeps through. He also can’t say how he’s meant to act around her.

They had a few switches leading up to this hike—

_‘We’ve gone up to the forest a few times. You’ll end up seeing it soon I bet.’_

_‘Who’s we? This shit better have dragons with the way you’ve been hyping it up.’_

_‘Me, Gansey, and Noah. Blue might start coming too.’_

_‘Blue as in waitress Blue? Psychic family Blue?’ Damn, Parrish has game.’_

_‘There’s no game. Look, her family could help us. Don’t be weird, Gansey’s already got that covered.’_

_‘How the fuck am I supposed to be you if I can’t be weird?’_

—with messages doing nothing to resolve Ronan’s confusion.

“I’m fine,” he says belatedly.

“Alright then.” She gets up with a huff and puts her attention on Gansey. “You find anything?”

“I brought this Latin dictionary,” Gansey murmurs, absentminded as his fingers flit through the pages. “I believe we need to translate the writing.”

Ronan is inclined to mind his own business. “It's a stupid joke,” he says.

“Pardon?” Gansey stares at him.

“It translates to a stupid joke.”

“What’s the—did you know the whole time?”

Ronan should have minded his business. “We have Latin together,” he explains to Blue and to Gansey, “ I was giving you time to practice for our quiz.”

Blue smiles and Gansey gives him a pointed look.

“What else does it say?” he asks.

Ronan answers, though he does not want to. Saying it out loud makes it real. The name Cabeswater grows inside his mouth, branching into other, clumsy words that threaten to reveal themselves: _hey hello I’m not actually Adam I’m an Irish dude and that’s my fucking handwriting on my dumb Irish rock in your dumb American forest._

“Stop trying to climb the tree, Noah,” Blue scolds.

His hysterical words vanish, but Cabeswater stays.

Noah lands neatly on the ground and wastes no time. “We should leave. This place is—” he shudders in lieu of a word— “and it’s freaky how Adam’s watch isn’t working.”

(Adam copied and pasted a few links on his phone about ley theory and how _‘time isn’t linear there Ronan, don’t forget I have to get to work.’_ )

Gansey is quick to argue, “we haven’t been here long, we should—”

“How do you know how long we’ve been here, your phone isn’t working either!”

The leaves rustle, and Ronan’s foot is significantly wetter.

“I think we should leave.” Gansey’s mouth pinches in disapproval, which only encourages Blue to continue, “we learned one thing, what are we gonna do with that? You wanna walk in circles in this forest? Some of us have jobs, boat shoes.”

“I need to get to work too,” Ronan says and it’s the last bit of pressure Gansey needs.

The sun is setting as Gansey drives back. Ronan carelessly studies the side mirror. He has to go to Adam’s job, go back to Adam’s home, do Adam’s homework, not breathe wrong so he doesn’t piss off Adam’s father.

“It’s already dusk,” Gansey observes, “didn’t we come here early afternoon?”

“It didn’t feel like more than an hour.”

“Talk about something else,” Noah begs.

Ronan turns up Gansey’s generic music and their conversation fades to fuzzy noise.

His reflection is a portrait of exhaustion. The Pig passes a gap in the houses and sunset hues stroke over the side of his head. It’s still painted with tired, but Adam’s eyes explode in blue, the rims of his irises lighting up bright and deep.

Ronan looks away.

They drop Blue off and park outside of Monmouth, where Adam’s bike is also parked. Noah gets out of the Camaro and Ronan tries to follow his example.

“Wait.”

He flops back in the car seat.

Gansey wears a helpless smile. “Do you like Blue?”

“Jesus.” Ronan rubs his palms into his eyes. “Why do you keep making that your business?”

“Because we’re friends, Adam. I just don’t want any tension here.”

Ronan is careful to not swear; he’s not letting Adam get away with his brand. “You’re the only one causing tension.”

“I’d like to help, if you’re interested in her, I could—”

If only he could see how Adam’s mouth moved when he swore himself, then Ronan could replicate it. In a PG-rated tone, “I’m interested in us being friends and finding your damn dead king.”

This is par the course of what Adam has told him, the blanket goal of their hanging out. He can’t discern if friendship is all Adam wants; he can’t act any more than that with Blue. He should ask Adam about it.

Instead, during a break at Boyd’s, after he’s logged the day’s events, Ronan asks: _‘Have you ever been somewhere you’ve never gone before?’_

Two days later: _‘Read that to yourself and tell me it makes any sense.’_

_‘Ok smartass. Have you ever gone somewhere you’ve never been and felt like you’ve been there before?’_

⊷⊶

_‘You mean like deja vu?’_

The closing line of _u_ shoots down crooked as the Pig lurches to a stop. Gansey meets a sliver of Adam’s aggravated face in the rearview mirror.

“There’s a chance I need help with the engine.”

“And yet you drove us all this way without telling me.”

Gansey shrugs, unrepentant. “You were having such an intimate moment with your notebook, I didn’t want to ruin it.”

They get out, and Cabeswater is waiting.

As usual, there are minute changes since their last visit. The trees are spaced wider, or closer, than they were previously. That one tree Adam’s fingers had grazed by is darker now, or lighter. On their own, the differences are minor, but put together they leave Adam with the sensation that the whole forest traveled two inches left.

The dirt doesn’t separate or sink under Adam’s feet. It embraces them, closing into the soles of his shoes. The others must feel it too, with the deliberate way they’re walking.

Adam moves up front near Gansey, who fiddles with a sleek camera, while Blue, on string duty, lags behind with Noah.

Noah whispers furiously, “I can’t believe we’re back here. Who cares now if we get out? The car won’t start and we all know what happens after that.”

Adam looks over his shoulder to exchange a wry smile with Blue.

She ties a bit of string around a tree. “We’ll get out. We have string.”

Noah catches Gansey with the camera. “Put that away, god, you’re going to Blair Witch us!”

Gansey takes a picture of him. “Henrietta doesn’t have any documentation of witches.”

“Maybe the witches burned it down,” Blue fires back.

Noah whimpers.

Gansey turns the camera to Adam. “Blow a kiss, will you?”

Adam blows the most solemn kiss he can, sweeping his hand away from his lips in one robotic motion. “For the ghosts about to haunt us.”

Noah’s “can you guys not” is drowned by Gansey’s fistbump and Blue’s snort of laughter.

Eventually, the boulder approaches their view, as it does each time, even though they never take the same route.

A twig snaps with a reverberating echo, National Geographic style.

A snout emerges from behind the boulder, then a deer’s head, then the whole body as it marches, serene and uncaring of their gawking.

They stand still.

Adam has spotted animals in Cabeswater—squirrels, the upturned nose of a skunk—and they’re all normal animal colors and move in normal animal ways. This deer is a stark, spectral white. It’s antlers wind up like two upside-down tornadoes, and it does not acknowledge them as it strides past. It leaves no prints on the ground.

The hair on the back of Adam’s neck prickles, though the deer doesn’t strike him as dangerous, only uncanny.

Once it’s out of their line of sight, Noah says, “that’s a sign. It’s an omen. We need to go.”

“We can’t leave any time something strange happens.”

“You want us to die Gansey? You want me to die?”

Adam tunes them out, craning his neck to see the deer. Realistically he should be able to, it’s slow and stands out in the warm forestry. But it’s gone.

“You can go back and wait at the Pig,” Gansey suggests.

Noah is affronted. “Alone?”

“I’m low on string,” Blue says with a note of finality.

Gansey looks at Adam beseechingly. Adam ignores him and checks behind the boulder. He’s not expecting a rift to an alternate dimension, but he is disappointed to see more plain dirt.

He glances over his shoulder. “Three to one, Gansey.”

“Et tu, Brute?”

Adam smirks. “Reciting overrated Latin isn’t going to impress anyone.”

“I love these jokes,” Noah says impatiently, “but we’re agreeing to leave now, right?”

He links an arm with Blue, who offers her other arm to Adam. Gansey makes the face of a kicked pedigree poodle, so Adam allows him to link into his free arm.

They walk back, lopsided and together.

⊷⊶

It’s been a week since Adam wrote: _‘We saw a white deer.’_

_(‘Or a buck. A stag. You know, one of those.’)_

He’d said more, he described it in analytical detail and Ronan, like it was a joke, like it wasn’t worth a second thought, had replied: _‘Damn maybe it needs some sun.’_

That white deer is all he’s been thinking about.

He’s thinking about it now, when a stack of papers lands on his desk.

“Congratulations on turning in all your homework, Mr. Lynch.”

Ronan scowls up at the teacher. A short man, Mr. Johnswort brought with him a kind disposition and shriveled white hair. Ronan didn’t go to class enough to have feelings on him beyond the standard distrust he reserves for all old people.

Ronan resents him now because he cannot bring himself to resent Adam for turning in his work.

Johnswort smiles. “Would it be too much to ask that you put the right date next time? I realize you’re excited to get out of here, but it’s a bit confusing to record.”

Ronan’s scowl deepens and he crumples the papers unceremoniously into his backpack. “There isn’t gonna be a next time.”

A thinner stack gets shoved in his face. Johnswort doesn’t look as kind anymore. “At least make sure these get to Mr. Cheng.”

Henry misses the first ten minutes of math every Wednesday for student council. The ten minutes pass and he doesn’t show. Ronan busies himself with drawing tiny deer and tornado antlers on the margins of Henry’s papers and leaves a respectable fifteen minutes before class ends.

Johnswort’s disposition, as he does this, is very unkind.

If Henry’s not in the student body meeting room—and Ronan checks, mostly to glare at the other council members—or in one of the lobbies, handing out flyers for his new niche proposal, he’s up on the balcony.

It’s a restricted area, unenforced because nobody wants to walk up the four flights of stairs to get there. Except for Henry; he’s leaned up against the corner where the railing meets the rising wall of the bell tower.

“Mr. Cheng,” Ronan mimics Johnswort’s stern tone, handing the assignments over to Henry.

Henry’s pensive expression shifts to a grin. “Oh, are we roleplaying?”

“Not in the mood.” Ronan rests his elbows against the railing beside Henry. “Why’d you ditch?”

“I’ve dabbled in the art of rule-breaking.” He skims over his work. “I didn’t draw these. These are some weird dogs, Lynch.”

Hiding his issues from Henry is a complex, nuanced operation; Ronan hasn’t needed to do it since he told Henry about his dreaming. He’s out of practice.

Ronan starts off delicately. “Your mom’s been to America, right?”

“That’s a random question.”

Ronan levels him with a piercing look. Henry, unfazed, gives him one back. Ronan is not cut out for this detective, searching-for-clues type fuckery. 

Henry gives him a pitying nudge and admits, “fine, yeah, she has. A lot.”

“Has she gone to Virginia?”

Henry frowns. “That’s in America? She got me one of those Welcome To magnets from it for my fridge.”

“Was that before we met?”

“I can’t remember shit that far back. After, I guess, she might have started going to America more after she met your dad.”

It’s can’t be a coincidence that Henrietta has a magic forest with touches of Ronan in it when his father and Henry’s mother had also been in Virginia. He doesn’t have sources to cite, but that’s too many magic and magic-adjacent beings in one place.

“Funny you would ask about her,” Henry says, eyeing him.

“Because I think she’s suspicious as fuck?”

Henry snorts. “That’s you with everyone. No, I was reliving those fond getting kidnapped memories.”

Ronan sighs. This is a subject Henry thinks about a lot, unfortunately out loud, and with each retelling, the story gets more involved and convoluted. Ronan listens with half an ear; this rendition includes a lovingly described escape montage.

By the time it’s done, he’s fashioned an airplane out of one of Henry’s papers.

He lets it fly. “Don’t take it the wrong way. If I got called for your ransom I wouldn’t try to bargain; I’d straight up save your weak ass. Hold that shit over you for life.”

“Nothing straight about that.”

Ronan leans precariously back over the railing to illustrate how close to done he is with this conversation.

Henry laughs, grabbing his sleeve and pulling him back.

“Wait, listen, I was taking that somewhere—speaking of straight, you remember the server from a few weeks ago?”

“No.”

“I got his number. He goes to the proletariat high school.”

“I don’t know what the fuck that means.”

It’s the envy again. Envy that all Ronan can do is look and think and be agitated of looking and thinking, and Henry can do everything more than that. It’s not that he hates himself for being like this anymore, it’s that he’s hated himself for so long he doesn’t know how to stop digging up the feelings that kill him. He’s built his skin out of those feelings.

These thoughts don’t go well with the gentle toll of the bell, signaling lunch, or with Henry’s easy smile. These thoughts gnaw him thin.

The airplane had fallen a few feet from him, and he bends to pick it up. Henry’s smile has waned once he’s back up.

“What’s with the gloom? I want naan of that. _Speaking_ of which—"

Ronan huffs an exasperated sigh. “Henry.”

“—there’s this new place selling tandoori burgers we need to check out.”

“You should take your date there.”

“It requires a Cheng and Lynch review first.”

Ronan pretends to give it thought. “Only if we don’t come back to this shithole.”

“Deal, thug.”

⊷⊶

_‘Are you sure you don’t want me to make a move on Sargent? Last chance before Dick tries to con her and she spray paints all his khakis.’_

_‘I’m worried about how specific that is. And for the last time, I Don’t.’_

He’s in class, and he debates adding one last bit. The ringing of the bell urges Adam to scribble it in: ‘ _Are you interested in her? Is that why you keep asking?’_

He writes on a new page so he doesn’t have to see the words again. The thought of Ronan flirting with someone is distinctly off-putting in a way Adam can’t place.

Three crawling days go by before a switch and Ronan’s reply: _‘Not my type. I just don’t want to be an asshole holding you back from life shit because of our whole thing.’_

Adam’s pen hovers over the next blank line, unsure and wavering.

They had returned from Cabeswater, a trip doomed the moment Noah stepped on a seashell. They all proceeded to step on seashells, and Blue peeled back some bark, and there were seashells under that, and then it was time to leave.

He’s sitting alone in the living room of Blue’s house, with the intention of completing homework in this rare bit of calm it’s providing. Gansey is in the other room getting a reading from one of Blue’s aunts and Blue is—

“Adam!” She calls from the kitchen.

Adam dog-ears the notebook page and goes to the kitchen, where he is promptly ambushed by Blue, her aunt Calla, and a bucket of tea.

“I don’t think I want this,” Adam says, holding the tea in both hands.

“I put coca-cola in it,” Calla says, as if that’s meant to be reassuring.

“A bit on the nose.” He stares into its murky depths. “Is it going to do something to me?”

Blue glances at Calla, who considers him shrewdly. “It’s got dandelion root and lemongrass.”

She’s silent until Adam meets her gaze directly, and continues, “it helps with dream magic, keeps you safe.”

She says this with a strange inflection, like it’s supposed to matter to him. Upon receiving news of her abilities, Adam avoided physical contact with Calla, but the house is cramped and he and Noah walked in on her hanging upside down in the hallway so he’s not sure how successful he’s been.

“It’ll get all your psychic openings flowing,” she adds.

“That doesn’t sound appealing. How do I close my psychic openings?”

“You’ll need them open for a reading.”

Adam looks back up at this. “I’m not paying for a reading right now.”

“And who says we have time? It’ll be another day, and you can consider testing that tea out payment enough.”

Adam hesitates.

“Swallow it like you mean it,” Blue says.

It could provide insight into their _whole thing_ , as Ronan so aptly put it. Adam takes a large gulp, catches Calla’s glare over the rim, takes four larger ones, and begins coughing.

Calla snatches the mug-bucket back from him, her smile satisfied. “That’s a keeper.”

She leaves them in a storm of swishy trousers and shiny blazer jacket, and through a gap in the door Adam sees her touch the back of Persephone’s cloudy hair and murmur in her ear.

He turns to Blue. “Why would she give something that helps with dream magic? What’s dream magic?”

Blue shrugs. “Maybe she thinks you don’t sleep well. Not that you need seer abilities to see that.”

Adam rests back against the counter. Except for the destruction of half his taste buds, he doesn’t feel changed from drinking the tea.

“May I have some water?”

Blue rolls her eyes. “You don’t need to ask.”

She hands him a glass, and as he fills it, she remarks, “you had a crush on me, didn’t you?”

Adam flips the tap down before the glass overflows. “Damn it, Blue.”

Her smile is prideful. “Oh my god, you so did.”

“Nobody here has any tact.”

“What? It’s not like you do anymore. For the record, I thought you were cute too.”

“Thanks,” Adam says dryly. “I appreciate the past tense.”

“That’s on you. I had no idea you were weird when I only saw your face.”

“Weird how?” He knows exactly weird how but he can quote Blue under his zero-star rating of Ronan’s so far dismal performance as Adam Parrish.

“Sometimes you’re kind of jerkish, if I’m going to be nice about it, and then you’re all,” she makes a broad wave at all of him, “‘may I have water’.”

“That’s not what my voice sounds like,” which is the only part of that assessment he can give a reasonable answer to.

“Well? Do you like someone else?” And in a stage whisper, “I can tell these things.”

That has to be bullshit because Gansey pretends not to make melty, owlish eyes at Blue, who, in spite of how blatant they are, remains oblivious.

“You can’t,” he says, omitting all the mean facts. “Why is your first thought that I like someone else?” He sets the glass down. “You don’t even have proof that I liked you. I didn’t say anything.”

Blue rolls her eyes. “Come on, Adam. It’s me.”

Which is fair, but Blue’s gesture has Adam caught with a sudden picture of Ronan rolling his eyes. Of how he imagines Ronan in control of Ronan might do it. Ronan is the excessive eye-rolling type, he’s sure.

Blue starts opening her mouth again, so Adam shoots back, “do you like someone?” He casts a significant look in the direction of Gansey and Persephone. “I can tell too.”

She sours up and swipes the empty glass from him. “Watch your mouth or I’ll be volunteering you for tea-tasting again.”

He’s still smiling as he goes back to the living room. It’s a stupidly ordinary conversation to have after returning from a forest that seemed to breathe with them.

_‘You’re not holding me back from anything. But to be clear, you are an asshole. On principle.’_

⊷⊶

_‘Our whole thing is really hard.’_

_‘You just figured that out? I better stop the nerd jokes.’_

_‘Shut up. It’s inconvenient to wait three days to hear your (wrong) review of my Latin essay.’_

_‘Knew you were thinking about yourself.’_

_‘Haha. I’ve been saving up for my own phone. Talking would be a lot faster.’_

_‘No, it would be the same. Before us, I only used this shit to take pictures of Chainsaw. You never had a pen pal or anything?’_

_‘Yeah in elementary school we had a pen pal project.’_

_‘So this is the same. We had it in primary school. I just talked shit about how large my teacher’s nostrils were.’_

_‘Oh man, that was you?’_

_‘FUCK OFF YOU WERE NOT MY FUCKING PEN PAL.’_

_‘Yeah, I’m messing with you. See what I mean though? If we could talk normally I’d get to see how stupid you must have looked.’_

_‘Cool, I already know how much you like looking at me.’_

Adam changes the topic.

⊷⊶

Ronan is gentle with the dishes as he washes them. They don’t clang together, the spoons and knives don’t scrape, and none of the sounds in the kitchen overpower the ones from the TV. There’s no sleep after he finishes this, because Adam’s covering a late night warehouse shift, so he has that to look forward to.

His shoulder aches and Ronan is aware that under the shirt is something splotchy and dark. The warehouse job will be difficult tonight.

He wonders what it would be like to comfort Adam when it hurts like this, if they were both here at the same time. He wouldn’t be able to do it.

Ronan places his hand over his shoulder. He places Adam’s hand over Adam’s shoulder. This is how he might do it.

He expects it to feel as stupid as it looks—a boy alone under flickery light, gripping his own shoulder with chapped, sudsy fingers.

But it doesn’t feel stupid.

It feels like three days after his father’s murder when he couldn’t sleep because of blood under his eyelids. It feels like going downstairs to sneak some of his father's alcohol but discovering Declan already in the kitchen drinking it, their eyes meeting for a split second before he had returned upstairs. It feels like never talking about it.

Which is to say, it feels pathetic.

He should tell Adam about his dreaming.

⊷⊶

_‘Woke up with a freezing bag of water in my bed. Explain?’_

_‘It was ice. From the warehouse break room.’_

_‘Thank you.’_

⊷⊶

Adam is comfy to a profound level when he wakes up.

There’s a sketchbook lying on one of Ronan’s pillows. The sheets are dusted finely with some scattered pastels. On the open page are columns of eyes, some drooping with sleep, some wide and bulgy, all of them filled in at the iris with a different shade of blue. The last one is circled with _caeruleus_ written underneath.

The window is open, and the briny tinge in the wind sharpens him awake. Adam has the foggy memory of working through a mountain of homework last night, and falling into the numbing, six-feet-under kind of sleep, the kind of sleep that erases days and years, the kind of sleep Adam rarely gets.

He checks Ronan’s phone, which is plugged in but not charging. The calendar icon next to the journal app displays Thurs. 14. Adam leaves a voicemail canceling Ronan’s appointment before going into the journal. Ronan hasn’t written anything beyond his typical sparse log of the two days between their last switch and a few selective replies to their ten different off-topic conversations.

The bathroom lights don’t work. Neither do the ones in the kitchen. The TV doesn’t turn on either.

“The electricity isn’t working,” Adam tells Henry in the car.

“Another outage?” Henry did not appear bothered, though that could be due to him putting all his focus on driving in a fixed line. “I’m telling you man, move out. It’s blackouts and earthquakes now, tell me what you’re going to do when it’s a blackout after an earthquake, you’re in the middle of nowhere, and a murderer comes knocking on your door?”

“Haven’t thought that far ahead,” Adam says wryly. Then he sits up straighter. “Hold on, sorry, earthquakes?”

Henry spares him a quick glance. “The one last December.”

That would be before the switching started.

“Right,” Adam says, though he does not feel particularly right.

Maybe the blackouts are rare; after all, this is the first one Adam is experiencing. Or they’re a weekly Lynch household event and he’s just never been in Ronan’s spot when they happened before.

It’s second nature now to refer to Ronan’s body as his, and Adam can almost convince himself he has Ronan memorized and recognized. Ronan leaves his art supplies everywhere, he leaves his jeans everywhere, Chainsaw loves him and Matthew loves him, he hates homework and maybe himself, he’s blunt and he’s vague.

He keeps secrets.

His mother—a secret. His dead father—a secret. The texture of the glassy scars on his arms—a secret, seen and unsaid, written on the same page as the steep drop in his father’s pitch followed by the rise of his fists.

(There’s an endless stretch to the loud, unsaid things between them.)

The outages and this earthquake could be random blips in Ronan’s life, but they had exchanged so many barbs and jabs and pointless conversations over the months it’s irritating that they’ve never come up _._

It strikes Adam as unfair that Ronan’s secrets are travel-friendly, locked up in him, while most of Adam’s are sprawled out bulky and everywhere. It’s there in his three jobs, and in the weight over his shoulders, it’s in his whole family, and his whole, humiliating home.

“You alright, brotato fry?” Henry’s arms are rigid, uncooked spaghetti glued to the steering wheel.

“Are you alright? You can relax your arms.”

“My arms are very relaxed. Flaccid, you might even say.”

Adam closes his eyes and presses his index finger to his temple. He does not let that finger follow the downward slope of his eyebrow and rest in the concave curve before his nose. “But I didn’t. Please don’t try to put those words in my mouth.”

“Please? _Please?_ I’ll miss these moments of politeness your head injury has gifted us.”

“Fuck you,” Adam tries.

“There he is.”

The electricity still isn't working when he's back. He uses Ronan's phone light to maneuver around the house.

The journal app is on perpetual night mode, so he's not squinting too hard as he types: ‘ _You didn’t tell me there were blackouts here.’_

_‘Oh dude I forgot. They don’t usually happen.’_

He’s inexplicably relieved that this is a forgotten thing, not a hidden one. _‘Do you know why they do?’_

‘ _No. I’m close by the ocean, maybe the storms fuck shit up.’_

This sentence wedges down on him like the unfitting piece of a puzzle he’s been subconsciously solving, or like he has the end of a sentence, and the middle, but not the start.

The fact that Ronan lives here alone, another secret.

⊷⊶

Ronan regrets coming outside.

Declan’s suburban mom Volvo is in the driveway, a forever unwelcome sight. One of the wheels encroaches on the privacy of a lone, brave orange weed.

Worst of all, Declan is leaned against its side, his gaze cool and combative.

Ronan bizarrely imagines a wine bottle materializing in his hand and throwing it at Declan’s head, purposefully missing and ruining his stupid car’s paint job. Some autotuned cello-heavy symphony orchestra would be appropriate too.

But there is no cinematic music, only the still air, thawing with anticipation for spring, and Declan’s face turning ugly with impatience.

“Are you getting in the damn car or not?” he barks.

 _Or not_ , Ronan thinks. But Declan is prepared for this.

“I told mom we were going to spend some quality time together, so she’ll be asking you about it. Do you want to lie to her?”

He stomps his way to the Volvo.

Ronan slams the car door shut and buckles up with an equal amount of aggression. “You can’t do that mom said shit anymore.”

“If I can’t do it, then how did I just do it?”

“This is why you’re the least favorite.”

Declan’s grip on the wheel tightens. “I wasn’t lying Ronan, I wanted to have a serious discussion.”

“You said you wanted quality time, and us talking is the literal fucking opposite—”

“You’re not going to therapy anymore.”

The car slows to a stop by one of the pillars of the arch leading into the circle of summer beach estates their home belongs to. They’ve driven under this arch many times; if Ronan twists his neck, he’ll still be able to see the washed, mint green of their garden.

Ronan pats his hands down his torso and his thighs. “You got me bugged? You got cameras in there, don’t you?”

Declan rolls his eyes. “I’m managing our medical shit, dumbass.”

Ronan slumps back. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Declan’s nails dig into the steering wheel and Ronan is expecting a fist fight, but his hands land limp on his lap.

“Therapy isn’t going to help you if you don’t let it.”

Ronan would have preferred the physical fight.

“It doesn’t help because I’m a freak.” Declan opens his mouth in the shape of a _yes_ , so Ronan speaks louder. “Half my problems are because I’m pulling freak shit out of my head. Hold on—maybe I’ll just say it anyway so I don’t have to see you in whatever science lab they stick me in.”

Declan’s mouth is thin and twisted. He starts driving again. For several minutes, it’s a choke-hold tense silence. Their typical silence.

He mutters, low and guttural in the back of his throat, volume increasing with his car’s speed, “if you could just try, if you could stop being selfish long enough to give a fuck just once—”

“—I’m going to make you crash your ugly car—”

The Volvo jolts to a stop. Ronan’s neck burns where the seatbelt bites into it.

“It’s been good for me!” Declan glares at him, his tone accusing. “If therapy’s worked for me, why can’t you make it work for you?”

Ronan does not allow this to surprise him. He answers whiplash fast, “everything works for you.”

The air between them is suitably awkward.

“It doesn’t,” Declan assures, “if it did, you wouldn’t have ended up in the hospital.”

“Sorry, I’m screwing over your fake nuclear family plan.”

“Dad ruined that before any of us existed.” Declan is smirking in a bitter way. “So much for the quality time.”

“Man if you expected some hugs and shit that’s on you.”

“Look, I had a thing planned. Can I just say what I was going to say if you agreed to go back into therapy?”

“You came here expecting me to agree with you?” Ronan presses a hand to the door handle.

Declan glares at him. “Dad made me—just let me have the credit of knowing I tried.”

Declan would not get credit for anything. “If you’re gonna use me to feel better about yourself, you’ll have to do something for me too.”

He’s on defense at once. “And what’ll that be?”

“I don’t need drug money.” Declan’s glare darkens and Ronan snaps, “I have some questions, that’s all. Just say your shit before I change my mind.”

“Fine.” Declan’s eyes span over everything but Ronan. “Weird things happened with dad’s dreams too—and I’m not saying what—I saw it, and you’re better at it than he is. So I wanted to say that one day it’ll be good, the dreams and...the rest of it. That’s what I should have said first anyway, in the hospital.”

There are numerous ways to respond to this, all cropping up in Ronan’s mind at once. _Shut the fuck up_ , his default to anything Declan-related, _what did you say at the hospital,_ eliminated for Adam reasons, _you don’t understand,_ eliminated because this would lead to Declan’s self-centered attempt at understanding, and it wouldn’t benefit Ronan to end their cease-fire until he’s out of the car, _it’s okay,_ eliminated because it’s not okay.

He did not need it to be good, he only needed to get to the part where it stopped being bad.

“That is some self-help book bullshit.”

“It was from a brochure, actually.”

“Well, it’s great you mentioned dad because the thing I needed has to do with him.”

“That’s not great at all,” Declan says, but he looks expectant.

Ronan broaches the topic in the vaguest manner possible. “Did dad ever go to Virginia?"

Declan’s brows screw into a puzzled frown. “You mean from America?”

“You clearly fucking know it’s from America, so just answer the question.”

“We went on that trip, remember? It was a long time ago, Matthew was only six.”

“We’ve gone on a lot of trips.”

“It was during that week-long bus tour along the east coast strip. I think dad wanted to celebrate you pulling out the beach place.”

Ronan does remember that trip, because it was the same week as Declan’s birthday and a pigeon had tried to eat Matthew’s fries. “That was the only time we went to Virginia?”

“We stopped there, and we stayed in this shitty little town. It was lame as all hell. I think Dad wanted to go back, he was checking out houses, and he kept returning even after we came home, but then...”

“He went and got killed.”

“Yes.” He stares at Ronan warily. “Was that it?”

He also needs to tell Adam about his dreaming.

“I also need to tell mom about your new girlfriend.”

⊷⊶

It had been a productive Saturday of playing Ronan’s part; Henry hadn’t given him a single _what are you on_ look and Adam had bit back from asking why rich people needed to thrift shop.

The lights don’t turn on in Ronan’s room, as they don’t everywhere else in the house. It’s another outage.

But Adam doesn’t need those lights. The curtains are pulled back and out the window, the moon is overblown in a movie-like way. All the furniture and chaotic pieces of not-furniture are glowing under its beams. When he has his own place, he would be alright with a little bit of this content disarray.

Adam sits on the bed and cushions his weary feet under the blankets. He plugs the phone in, an excuse to face the mirror.

The moon is a blooming halo around his head. Ronan’s appearance is otherworldly, a prophetic god rather than someone who spent the last several hours tracking through thrift shops. He turns his head away, and in his peripheral, he’s dark brown with his profile highlighted in bright light.

Like this, Ronan did not seem so different from the moon.

The phone is plugged in, and it’s not charging, and there’s no reason for him to keep looking. He turns his eyes away too.

Adam goes to draw the curtains shut.

In the green of the garden below is a white deer. Its head is tilted up, and its eyes are large and beady like Chainsaw’s.

Adam draws the curtains shut.

⊷⊶

_‘I saw the white deer out of your window. The same one I saw in Cabeswater. Cabeswater is in Henrietta. Which is in Virginia. And you’re in Belfast, Ireland. Whatever is going on, I need you to tell me.’_

It’s written in the clipped, scientific format as their earliest messages.

The most immediate part of Ronan is fully contrary. He’ll leave Adam in the dark, he’ll cut off all communication, and their only contact will be the days they live within each other’s skin.

But he’s felt Adam’s heartbeat like his own.

_‘When you’re back in your body after reading this, go to Cabeswater. Find that rock. Meet me there.’_

It wouldn’t hurt him to add more, but it’s a shot in the dark. It might not work. It wouldn’t work.

After their next switch: _‘At dusk, I’ll bike there after work.’_

And that’s it. No questions, all coldness.

Ronan takes his book bag, void of all books, and stuffs it with some large things, and a small thing, for pretense if he bumps into his mom.

He doesn’t.

The sky is leaning closer to red and it’s a time people consider dusk. He touches the boulder, and peers beyond it.

There are many little tide pools, and no Adam.

Ronan calls anyway. “Adam?”

The distant crash of waves answers him. They crash several times.

He knew it wouldn’t have worked, but the walk here was long enough for him to create an entire storyline where it did work. Everything about them was magical enough that there was the slimmest chance and Ronan had grabbed that chance.

Again, quiet with defeat: “Adam.”

And again, waves.

The sun is dipping into the ocean when he faces it.

It hits him—on that tiny chance he’s right, Adam wouldn’t be here, of course, Adam wouldn’t be here, they were in different time zones. Dusk for Adam would be well past midnight for him; Ronan wasn’t even here at the right time for. And it only mattered if Adam found Cabeswater, if Adam bothered to go to Cabeswater—

“Ronan.”

He freezes with his thoughts. The voice touches the back of his neck. It’s a voice he spoke in two days ago.

Ronan turns around.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for this very long and boring plot chapter. also sorry for being corny but _caeruleus_ means blue, but specifically the blue in deep bodies of water.


End file.
